Politico: “Michigan is looking less competitive by the day, and there’s a growing likelihood of Joe Biden blowing out Donald Trump here come November 3. All three Rust Belt states that Trump improbably won in 2016 — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — are problematic for the president this year. But Michigan is where things look bleakest.”
“His support has diminished among the white working-class. Black turnout appears certain to rebound after a dismal showing in 2016. New laws that allow for early voting and no-excuse absentee balloting are expected to push voter participation to historic levels, with Democrats the expected beneficiary of low-propensity Michiganders flooding the ballot box. But the simplest explanation for the president’s trouble here is that he’s continuing to hemorrhage support from white, college-educated women in the suburbs of Detroit.”
“It’s hard to overstate just how badly Trump is performing with this crucial demographic. Over the past several weeks, a raft of internal polls have produced numbers that political professionals here are struggling to comprehend.”
NATIONAL–YouGov—Biden 52–Trump 42
NATIONAL–IBD/TIPP—Biden 51–Trump 43
NATIONAL–USC Dornsife—Biden 55–Trump 41
NATIONAL–Rasmussen—Biden 50–Trump 45
NATIONAL–Qriously—Biden 52–Trump 38
NATIONAL–Redfield & Wilton—Biden 49–Trump 41
GEORGIA–SurveyUSA—Biden 48–Trump 46
GEORGIA–Quinnipiac—Biden 51–Trump 44
NEW HAMPSHIRE–Suffolk University—Biden 51–Trump 41
MICHIGAN–EPIC-MRA—Biden 48–Trump 39
ARIZONA–Reuters/Ipsos—Biden 50–Trump 46
PENNSYLVANIA–RMG Research—Biden 49–Trump 43
NORTH CAROLINA–Susquehanna Polling and Research—Biden 48–Trump 46
NORTH CAROLINA–New York Times/Siena—Biden 46–Trump 42
OHIO–Quinnipiac—Biden 48–Trump 47
FLORIDA–St. Pete Polls—Biden 49–Trump 47
FLORIDA–Reuters/Ipsos—Biden 49–Trump 47
A new Montana State University poll finds Steve Bullock (D) leading Sen. Steve Daines (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 49% to 47%.
The Washington Post has videos of closed-door sessions of conservative activists discussing attempts to limit mail-in ballots from being sent to voters and amplifying conspiracies about voting.
Said one: “We need to stop those ballots from going out.”
New York Times: “NBC News confirmed on Wednesday that it would broadcast a prime-time town-hall-style event with Mr. Trump from Miami on Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern, with the president fielding questions from Florida voters.”
“The event will directly overlap with an already-scheduled ABC televised town-hall meeting with Mr. Biden in Philadelphia, which will begin at the same time.”
Daily Beast: “According to multiple sources familiar with the president’s thinking, Trump has told close associates that he wishes to counter-program the Biden town hall and score higher TV viewership numbers, and then use such a contrast in ratings to humiliate his Democratic opponent. Predictably, Trump also wants his 2020 team to make a big deal out of pushing out those numbers, should his hour’s ratings beat Biden’s 90-minute-long event.”
Said one Trump associate: “He looks at this the same way he looks at attendance at his rallies versus the turnout Biden gets for his events. He obviously wants to blow Biden out of the water.”
Hollywood Reporter: “NBC’s decision to air the Trump town hall directly against the Biden town hall on ABC drew sharp criticism, as it means that viewers watching live will need to choose which candidate to watch. Because the Trump town hall will be simulcast on multiple networks, it is likely to have more viewers.”
“In the final stretch of a campaign in which Catholic voters are seen by both parties as a decisive bloc in several battleground states, Biden’s campaign has increasingly highlighted his direct connection to the faith — and his potential to make history as the country’s second Catholic president,” the Washington Post reports.
“The strategy comes as President Trump and his allies have sought to portray Democrats as anti-Catholic, seizing on past criticism from some Democratic senators of the conservative Catholic teachings embraced by Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. But the focus on Biden’s Catholicism represents a renewed emphasis in identity politics for Democrats, who have directed much of their attention to the role of Black voters but have not always given prominence to the cultural roots of the White former vice president.”
“A federal judge Wednesday extended the deadline for registering to vote until 11:59 p.m. Thursday in light of a construction accident that shut down the online voter registration system for several hours Tuesday,” the Richmond Times Dispatch reports.
“More than a million Texans have already cast ballots after just the first day of early voting,” the Houston Chronicle reports.
“President Trump is being forced to play Electoral College defense with a trip to Iowa, a state he won handily in 2016 but where Democrat Joe Biden is making a late push,” the AP reports.
“Trump’s heavy travel this week, including his rally Wednesday in Des Moines, reflects his uphill climb three weeks before the election. He has already visited Pennsylvania and Florida and will head to another battleground state he likely can’t win without — North Carolina — as well as those he once thought were in his grasp but where recent polling shows Biden improving — Iowa and Georgia.”
There’s no better proof that Donald Trump is on defense in the presidential race than his campaign scheduling a rally in Macon, Georgia later this week.
President Trump took to Twitter to urge the California Republican Party to “fight on” in its move to collect ballots in unofficial “drop boxes’’ around the state, in defiance of legal threats from state officials, Politico reports.
“Republicans typically hold a slight edge in absentee ballot returns in Florida elections. But this year, there’s been a stunning development,” Politico reports.
“For the first time ever at this stage of a general election, Democrats here are outvoting Republicans — and by a mammoth 384,000-vote margin through Tuesday.”
Despite polls showing President Trump losing among voters aged 65 and older by more than 20 points, the president tweeted a photoshopped image of Joe Biden as a nursing home resident.
The Austin American Statesman reports that out the more than 850,000 eligible voters in Travis county, 97% of them are registered to vote in the November 3 general election.
“Endangered Senate Republicans have a new running mate in the battle to keep their narrow majority: Amy Coney Barrett,” CNN reports.
“As President Trump’s standing has deteriorated, they are aligning themselves closely with his Supreme Court nominee, hoping their aggressive push to confirm her to the bench before Election Day will be enough to energize their base, fill their campaign coffers and overcome the drag at the top of the ticket.”
“Before his ouster earlier this summer as President Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale had been banking on a $200 million cash surge for October,” Business Insider reports.
“Parscale had been spending big based on his internal estimates. But the money never came, and a GOP source close to the president said his reelection campaign would have been broke by the first week of October had Parscale not been pushed aside.”
Said a former GOP insider: “They don’t have enough money to close out the race.”
Max Boot: “Trump is on track to be the first president since World War II to see a net loss of jobs during his term. Even worse, he has presided over the loss of 214,000 lives and counting from covid-19. That’s already nearly four times the U.S. fatalities in the Vietnam War, previously the nadir of presidential bungling. Even now, after having contracted covid-19 himself, Trump refuses to take the pandemic seriously. He keeps promising it will magically disappear of its own accord while holding rallies practically guaranteed to spread the disease.”
“As if that weren’t reason enough to vote for Biden, there is also the fact that Trump has abused his power; he was even impeached for doing so. He has trafficked in racism and xenophobia. He has incited violence. He has kowtowed to dictators and trashed our alliances. He has welcomed Russian attacks on our elections. He has locked children in cages. He has called for his opponents to be locked up. In sum, Trump has made a strong case that he is the worst president in our history.”
“Yet tens of millions of voters still support him. What are they thinking?”
Politico: “A new pro-Trump super PAC ad uses stock footage from Russia and Belarus in a major ad buy that’s airing in three swing states. It’s the fourth time in three months that an ad promoting President Trump’s reelection has used footage from Russia.”
“The plane that Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) climbs into in a recent campaign ad is a former Norwegian Air Force jet that is now privately owned and is a model that hasn’t been used by the United States Air Force since the 1980s,” the Arizona Mirror reports.
James Carville predicted that Joe Biden will be declared the winner of the presidential election by 10:30 p.m. ET on Election Night, The Hill reports.
Said Carville: “This thing is not going to be close. We’re going to know early. I’m not in any panic whatsoever.”
He added: “l probably see as much polling as anybody in the country. And if anything, it continues to improve for Biden. I kind of thought the natural gravity would take it down, but that doesn’t seem to be happening as of yet. And we’ve got three weeks before we go to post. I’m ready to go. I think we’re going to know, and I anticipate opening a bottle of champagne.”
“Benjamin Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer, puts the odds of the 2020 presidential election ending up in an all-out legal brawl that lasts into January at less than 1%,” Bloomberg reports.
The New York Times finds “four inflection points in Mr. Biden’s fund-raising metamorphosis, beginning with one unwittingly provided last fall by Mr. Trump, whose presidency has been rocket fuel for Democratic fund-raising.”
“The other three points — all linked in different ways to race — emerge from the 2020 data: Mr. Biden’s sweeping victories delivered by Black voters in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday, the protests following the police killing of George Floyd and, especially, the selection of Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.”
better start workshopping responses to the “Biden apology tour” now.
No WAY will the magats allow him to fix our alliances.
Gloomy and nay-saying as I am, (sup, alby) I will say that even though the polls are similar to 2016, the undecideds are WAY lower…. Although, i DO remember this thread (yes.. on a different website) confidently saying that Clinton would win GA….. but the lack of undecided voters is the one thing that gives me hope. I still say that hospital visit was a stunt, but whatever… we’ve already moved on and like every other “new low” it’s like it never happened.